I'm the chief digital writer for the Columbia Journalism Review
From Scientific American: "In November 1949 Chien-Shiung Wu and her graduate student, Irving Shaknov, descended to a laboratory below Columbia University. They needed antimatter for a new experiment, so they made their own, using a machine called a cyclotron. The machine's multiton magnet was so gigantic
From Flaming Hydra: "The best-kept secret in the history of Marvel Comics was in high dudgeon by the time he sat down at his typewriter. It was a July afternoon in 1971, and Ron Whyte, a playwright and activist, was about to hammer out an ill-advised letter.
From the BBC: "A man hoping to become the first person to complete an unbroken round-the-world walk is preparing for the last leg of his journey. Karl Bushby set off from Chile in 1998. Since then he has walked across American and Asian continents, swam 186 miles
From Nautilus: "The 60-year-old man lying on the street, as far as anyone knew, was just a janitor hit by a drunk driver. There was no mention of it on the local news, no obituary in the morning paper. His name might have been Anonymous. But it
From Science Alert: "Nearly two decades ago, an experiment floating high above Antarctica caught a weird signal. Designed to capture the radio spurts of cosmic rays falling from above, in 2006 the Antarctic Impulsive Transient Antenna (ANITA) recorded a short pulse of radio waves from below – an event that
From Futurism: "A flurry of activity at pizza delivery outlets near the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, is a surprisingly accurate predictor of war, as hungry military leadership hunkers down to monitor unfolding military activities. As painstakingly documented by X account Pentagon Pizza Report, a "busier than usual"
From Luxury London: “Hidden under enormous shoulder pads and bleach blonde hair, Joan Hannington, who would go on to be dubbed the ‘Godmother’ of London’s criminal network, was one of the world’s most notorious jewel thieves. Her story epitomes the rag to riches trope, having been born in
From the WSJ: “A tiny Pentagon office had spent months investigating conspiracy theories about secret Washington UFO programs when it uncovered a shocking truth: At least one of those theories had been fueled by the Pentagon itself. The congressionally ordered probe took investigators back to the 1980s, when an Air
From the Journal of Urology: "First century Rome saw the introduction of vectigal urinae, a tax introduced by Roman emperor Vespasian for the collection and distribution of urine, an expensive raw commodity. It was used in the tanning industry, where it was mixed with the hide to soften it,
From SFGate: "The evidence of Petro Zailenko’s quiet legacy can be found all over this corner of the Northern California redwood forest. Signs throughout Hendy Woods State Park, nestled deep in Mendocino County’s Anderson Valley along the Navarro River, bear his name and facts — or theories, at
From Tempo de Conhecer: "There is a book whose reading — or mere possession — proved fatal for many. Not because it contained subversive ideas but because the object itself was deadly. It is a 19th-century book known as Shadows from the Walls of Death — a dark title for an
From PBS: "It was Coney Island in the early 1900’s. Beyond the Four-Legged Woman, the sword swallowers, and “Lionel the Lion-Faced Man,” was an entirely different exhibit: rows of tiny, premature human babies living in glass incubators. Barkers, including a young Cary Grant, called out to